My CDT Journey: Dr Amit Deo

 It has been almost two years since I completed my CDT journey and I can safely say that I look back fondly on my years at Royal Holloway. The first time I heard about the CDT was during the final year of my maths degree in 2015 where PhD students from various universities were invited to give short talks advertising their departments. For me, the ISG presentation was a breath of fresh air and I was left convinced that pursuing a PhD in cyber security was a real possibility even without a computer science degree. After reading an introductory book on cryptography, I decided to apply and was thankfully accepted.

Like most CDT students, I spent the first year following the various courses offered and attending the industry visits. Although I came to Royal Holloway with the vague idea that I would end up researching cryptography, I was keen to understand what other PhD topics were available to someone with a mathematics background. After many discussions, machine learning emerged as a topic I wanted to investigate further and I ended up doing a summer project on malware detection. After an extremely positive summer project experience, I was torn between pursuing a PhD in machine learning and cryptography, but ultimately settled on the latter.

During the research years, I was extremely lucky to have great supervisors who were always very supportive and available for discussing ideas. This certainly helped me get up to speed in the early days of research as I hadn't spent the first year of my CDT studying my specific research topic of lattice-based cryptography. This open line of communication with my supervisors and fellow CDT students was crucial in allowing me to develop my research skills. In the end I was lucky enough to co-author papers with my PhD supervisors and fellow CDT students throughout my time in the CDT. There was also ample opportunity to attend schools and conferences which really enhanced my understanding and experience of the academic community. A particular highlight was the Bar-Ilan winter school on cryptography. Another memorable aspect of the CDT was the internship where I was able to spend three months at the SingTel research laboratory in Singapore.

In November 2019, I joined ENS de Lyon as a post-doctoral researcher in lattice-based cryptography as a natural continuation of my PhD. Having spent a year and a half there, I decided that it was time for a new experience and began looking for research opportunities in industry. I am happy to say that I have recently started a new position at Crypto Quantique -- a start up offering end-to-end security specifically for the IoT setting. I look forward to learning and solving problems in this new environment while leaning on my experiences from the CDT.

Despite following a predominantly academic route, the CDT has certainly made me appreciate the wide variety of opportunities that exist in the area of cyber security. Overall, I feel very fortunate to have met and worked with many great people throughout my CDT journey and I am sure that I will remain in contact with them for many years to come.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post-PhD thoughts on the Cyber Security field: Amy Ertan, 2017 CDT Cohort, now Cyber and Hybrid Policy Officer at NATO HQ in Brussels.

It has been just over a year since I successfully completed my viva – a milestone that initially felt both terrifying and insurmountable when I first joined the CDT. Now, I have the privilege of reflecting on my PhD journey and how its opportunities have shaped my present. I also wish to inspire curious students to embrace the full potential of the CDT and similar programs.   When I first came across the CDT application form, I initially envisioned transforming from a disillusioned city worker into a technical cyber security wizard, focusing on governance or incident response – as those were the only cyber security functions I was familiar with at the time. Very quickly, the CDT taught me that cyber security encompasses a vast and comprehensive range of approaches, offering me a holistic perspective on the field. Supported by the CDT, I engaged with exciting research and practitioner communities to learn about security governance, feminist and critical approaches, geography, the philos
Read more

Remote working and Cyber Security: Georgia Crossland and Amy Ertan

Image
Introducing the project The shift to remote working represents a huge shift for employees and organisations alike, introducing significant implications for cyber security. Amy Ertan and Georgia Crossland are currently working on a research project, in collaboration with the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS) and funded by the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), on the impact of remote working on cyber security and wellbeing. This blog post will give an overview of a section of this project, how remote working impacts cyber security. In response to COVID-19, in March 2020, organisations across the world made the rapid shift away from physical office working to remote working, wherever possible. This shift has had a significant impact across many aspects of organisations. This blog post will offer a high-level overview of how the cyber threat landscape was impacted for many organisations and may further change organisational cyber resilience. Remote workin
Read more

New Publication: Remote Working and (In)Security?: Amy Ertan

Image
A recent research report by CDT researchers Amy Ertan and Georgia Crossland has been published with the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS). The report examines ‘The Impact of Pandemic-Driven Remote Working on Employee Wellbeing, the Psychological Contract and Cyber Security’, with research carried out through a series of interviews with senior cyber security colleagues between January and April 2021. The full report can be found on the RISCS website: New publication: Remote Working and (In)Security | RISCS. Context In the UK and around the world, the impact of COVID-19 represented a total shift away from what was considered ‘normal living’. One aspect of this change was the rapid transition to remote working as people were encouraged to work from home and limit contact with others as far as possible through repeated lockdown conditions. Fellow CDT colleague Georgia Crossland and I were curious to explore how remote working has impacted the experiences - and se
Read more